


but love is a power greater than that, just like the songs and stories told

by janie_tangerine



Series: but you and I, we've been through this maybe a hundred times before [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Continuation, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Historians, I Blame Tumblr, M/M, Poor Theon, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 23:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7594582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Theon takes it upon himself to write the story of how Robb's campaign really went.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but love is a power greater than that, just like the songs and stories told

**Author's Note:**

> So, an anon on tumblr asks _Could you write Theon, after the war ends, making sure that people remember Robb? I keep thinking about that line from Hamilton "And when my time is up, have I done enough, will they tell your story?"_. A while ago, tumblr user yol-ande asked if I'd consider doing historian!Theon based on that bit in the first fic in these series where I mentioned Theon having written an account of what really happened during the war and it being found in modern Westeros centuries later, so I figured that I'd just merge the two things and go for it. I put this in these series because it started from that idea, but you can read this without having read all the rest, it pretty much stands alone.
> 
> Also, yol-ande made [fanart](http://janiedean.tumblr.com/post/145566293423/yol-ande-hes-staring-out-of-the-window-in) for it a while ago so I'm adding the obligatory fic to it at this point ;)
> 
> For the rest: obviously I still don't own anything and the title is from Bruce Springsteen (no one is surprised about this really I suppose).

The first time Theon realizes that _maybe_ , just maybe, not everyone remembers Robb the way _he_  does, it’s during a banquet during which he’s barely eating. They’re celebrating the end of the Long Night, but there’s not really much to celebrate if you ask him - a staggering amount of people died, Jon Snow looks like a walking corpse himself and no one can explain how he still manages to move his right arm, the one that had been holding Lightbringer when he slew the Great Other and about _went on fire_  the moment he did. Most _men_  are dead. That’s why the table is full of old lords, their daughters and their children.

He’s near Wylla Manderly. Who is telling an interesting story about the time Lord Seaworth managed to assure Stannis the Manderlys’s support by insulting a bunch of people named Frey. And -

“Can you imagine? He said that Robb Stark was _a vile dog and died like one_. Good thing that Lord Davos set him straight even if they wanted him dead for it, but no one else could say a thing and they dragged me away when I tried -”

Theon excuses himself, pushes away the food he couldn’t stomach and gets out of the room.

_A vile dog_. Fuck’s sake. Maybe he shouldn’t push it, but -

But he needs to know.

–

So he goes to find Lord Seaworth.

“I heard Lady Wylla at the feast yesterday,” he says, his voice suddenly not trembling as he had imagined it would. “She said - she said that when you tried to get her father’s alliance - the Freys in attendance spoke about Robb, didn’t they?”

“They might have,” Lord Seaworth says, slowly.

“Then I - could you tell me what they said?”

“Do you _really_  want to know?”

“Please.”

Lord Seaworth takes a deep breath. “First they said that the wedding - that the massacre was _his_  work. Then that he turned into a beast and tore off someone’s throat and that he slew Lord Manderly’s son if I’m not wrong.”

He _turned into a beast_? Theon almost recoils - no. No, Robb never -

“Then he said _all_  northmen turned into beasts or wolves or whatever, and that he slew most of the ones that didn’t himself.”

“That’s ridiculous -”

“Don’t you tell _me_. Then they said that they betrayed all of them for the first wench he found appealing.”

_That was because of me_ , Theon thinks at once, and he’d _know_ because he has spoken to Jeyne Westerling when she arrived in Winterfell looking entirely _not_  the way a queen should and broke down in tears when Jon told her that of course she could stay. _Not because he found her appealing_.

“That he betrayed the North for the Riverlands first and then Riverlands for the wench in question. That he was a vile dog and died like one.”

Theon can hear that he hasn’t said everything.

“My Lord, say everything if it please you.”

“I don’t know if _you_  want to hear it.”

“I think I do.”

“Someone - someone said that Lord Bolton couldn’t be too bad to deal with eventually, but that his son was a vile monster and they were worried about him.” He breathes in. “The same person who said that Robb Stark was a vile dog and died like one said that _he_  was the real monster, not Ramsay Bolton.”

“Excuse me,” Theon says at once, thanking all the gods he’s still not sure he believes in that they were having this conversation outside before running behind the first snow-covered bush he sees and vomiting what little breakfast he had eaten before.

Gods.

Gods, _he can’t fucking believe that someone would have the gall to even bloody compare Robb and Ramsay for fuck’s sake, and the bare idea of it is just_ -

“That’s why I thought that you didn’t want to hear it,” Lord Seaworth says from behind him. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Theon says, standing up and trying to not let his knees falter, “No, I _wanted_  to hear it, I think. I imagine that it’s a, popular opinion in the Riverlands, isn’t it.”

“I fear it might be,” Lord Seaworth says. “The North _knows_  that it was all bullshit, of course, but I don’t know how things would fare south.”

Theon hadn’t really _thought_  about what he’d do with that information, but the idea that some part of Westeros might go on thinking such things of the best person he ever knew who only ever  _married the southern wench_  and ended up dead also because of _his_ dumb mistakes and with whom he should have fucking died -

Well.

He was planning on going to Harlaw for a while and lay low - he might as well make use of that time wisely, but before he does _maybe_  he’ll ask around. Ramsay didn’t take his _brains_ , after all, and he has enough fingers to write down enough to set this straight.

“My lord,” he says, “do you think that you would be so gracious to tell me _everything_  that went down in White Harbor _and_  in Blackwater?”

“Of course I would tell you,” Lord Seaworth says. “But that’s not just because _you_  want to know, is it?”

“No,” Theon admits, “no it’s not.”

–

Lord Seaworth was the easier part of it.

He has to go up to Jon and ask him if Lord Manderly or the Greatjon will consider talking to him even if he wasn’t too happy about Theon eventually _not_  being executed. But then again, _he_  hadn’t killed Bran or Rickon after all, had he? Jon asks why. Theon tells him.

He has an audience two days later. Lord Manderly isn’t overtly pleased to talk to him, but evidently he doesn’t want to possibly make his regent _and_  the man who saved the entire realm angry, and he answers Theon’s questions. The Greatjon is even _less_ happy, but he’s the only person around the castle who _was_  at the Red Wedding and he has no other choice.

He talks to Arya, who had been outside the Twins, and to Sandor Clegane, who had been with her. The latter just answers his questions straight, Arya only does because Jon asked it of her, but when Theon tells her  _why_  he needs to know she seems to decide that he’s sincere and it’s a worthwhile effort.

So she talks.

He talks to every single lord who hadn’t sided with the Boltons even if they look at him as if he were some kind of roach for the most time, he talks to Jon and Sansa again and for the first time in years they all seem to actually reach an understanding about where they all stood back in the day.

He talks to Jeyne Westerling, who breaks down in tears when he tells her why he wants to, and breaks down in tears another five times as she tells the entire story, her hands clutching at her stomach as she cries and says that she wishes she could at least having given him a son. She’s so devastated that at some point he ends up taking both of her hands in his, because he can’t take the sight of the poor girl sobbing that hard just at the thought of Robb not being here anymore, not that he doesn’t understand her.

He talks to Edmure Tully, also, who is a lot less angry than most of the others - he says that he spent enough time as a prisoner to understand his point of view and that he’s too tired to hold grudges. He gets Brynden Tully to give him a full recount of what went on during the war itself when he was there to supervise it. He talks to the few survived sons of Walder Frey’s who hadn’t approved of the wedding.

By the time he reaches Harlaw, he only has a small bag of belongings full to the brink with the notes he took every evening after asking around, just in case he forgot - and gods but the first were almost unreadable. Now they’re not anymore.

Asha _did_  ask him if he didn’t want to come to Pyke and maybe be her Hand. He refused.

He had thought he’d do _his_  account first, but maybe it’s really not a good idea - it’s entirely more urgent than he does _the other_.

His own can wait.

–

It takes him longer than he had thought.

Putting everything in order is hard especially when _he_  can’t exactly remember the time order for what happened when _he_  wasn’t with Robb, and he tries to spend as much time with his mother as he can, and it takes him months to just get the order straight.

After he does, though -

After he does, it’s not so hard. He sticks to the facts. He makes sure to give the people he spoke with their due. He doesn’t lie about his own responsibilities and on one side it’s actually liberating. 

He names it _The War in the North_ : _a true account of Robb Stark’s campaign_.

He thinks a lot about what Lord Manderly’s daughter had told him.

_He was brave and good, and the Freys murdered him. That’s what I told them before they dragged me away_.

He was, Theon thinks. He was and _he_  helped his downfall whether he wanted it or not, and he doesn’t think this will make it even, because it won’t.

But still -

Still.

_Robb Stark was barely ready to be a lord when he took his father’s place_ , he writes at the end of it. He remembers that. He remembers how hard Robb worked to be worthy of that title, he remembers how much it tired him and made him older and wearier in the span of months and how whenever he had some free time he’d spend it with him and Hallis Mollen because they were the only two people in Winterfell who didn’t look up to him as their lord or at least expected nothing from him in any sense whatsoever.

He remembers how he broke down in tears when he learned of his father’s death or how, just after his coronation, he asked Theon if he thought he could be any good at it.

_He wasn’t ready to be a king at all, but no boy of barely fifteen should be,_  Theon writes down. And that’s true - _he_  wasn’t ready for that when he thought he would be, and he was older. _He did the best he could and he honestly wanted his bannermen to not regret that choice. He might not have been the best king under the circumstances even if most of his misfortunes weren’t his direct fault as I hope is obvious from this memoir. But he tried to be the best he could. He was good, he was brave, he was kind and he died for it. There’s nothing to be done about that now, but he should be remembered for how he was, not for the lies his enemies spread after his death_. _And I hope this record at least sets things straight._

He puts the quill down, looks down at the page, doesn’t write the _I’m sorry and I miss you as much as I miss everything Ramsay Bolton took from me, not that his family didn’t take you from me as well_  that is itching to be inked at the end of it, stands up and opens the window. The sea around Harlaw looks very blue in the pale winter sunlight. He thinks Robb might have liked it.

Maybe he should copy that book or have someone do it, or both, and then he should send it to the Citadel and to the Wall, and to Winterfell because he did promise Jon and Sansa that he would.

He doesn’t try to stop the tears falling over his face, and he decides that maybe, just maybe, he can stop for a while and then he should write _his_  own version of things, because it might be useless but he thinks he wants it out. And maybe the world won’t care for his side of the facts, but if people in the future might look into it then he doesn’t know if he wants to go down in history as the man who backstabbed the person he was supposed to be with all along.

Well, he has all the time in the world to set things straight, doesn’t he?

 

End.


End file.
